Edwin_m

The Cross Country trains will have to remain as diesel or bi-mode unless a lot more route is electrified, and the Sheffield to St Pancras disappears in the EMR timetable recast (may have gone already) and in any case will become a bi-mode. So electrifying Erewash on its own won't allow any diesel workings to be converted to electric and at best will allow a bi-mode to use its diesels a little less. The best case is probably the Nottingham to Leeds service, for which most of the non-electrified section north of Sheffield will be done if HS2 eastern leg goes ahead as planned.

Quite a lot of freight uses it, but even if it comes from the MML rather than via Burton, it will be using other non-electrified lines on its journey. So it would remain diesel unless there was some major initiative on freight decarbonisation.

I generally reckon for these channels if you start watching the recording 15min after the programme start time and are reasonably dextrous with the fast forward button, you'll finish watching pretty much as the programme finishes.

I think Gizmo has now worked out that when a ball drops into a pocket in the snooker, it isn't going to fall out of the bottom of the TV to be played with.

Never used it, but they keep plugging this: https://uktvplay.uktv.co.uk/

On the major assumption that space could have been found for a transformer and rectifier, a dual-voltage or even an AC-only locomotive could have been produced by feeding the rectified DC into the existing DC control equipment. BR did this with the GE units that were built for DC but continued in service after the lines were converted to 25kV, and I believe SNCF's dual voltage locomotives before the advent of traction electronics were done in the same way. They'd have had to disable the regenerative braking though. I agree it would have been pointless assessing the haulage ability of the EM1 on AC lines. I suggest if a conversion was being contemplated it was more likely it was taken to Soho, as a place reasonably convenient to Witton, for GEC to crawl all over it and see if there was any possibility of adding said transformer and rectifier... ... or indeed of doing something more radical along these lines. I suspect it would have taken them about five minutes to come to the conclusion that was somebody's crackpot idea and totally impractical.

However that damage could be fairly terminal for 1500V traction running into 25kV.

There's been one of these on the up line at Grantham in recent years and it may still be there (last visit a couple of years ago due to Covid). It seemed to be switched on a lot of the time when I've changed trains, though that could be because there were staff on the line further round the bend which was probably the reason it was provided. It would emit a "safe tone" of a short warble every few seconds to prove it was still working, and a continuous warble if a train approached.

We lost Gizmo for a while yesterday but he turned out to be shut in a bedroom. He has a loud mew but usually doesn't choose to employ it in these situations. As the rest of the household has no sense of smell due to current/recent Covid, I had to go and sniff everything in the room to check for little accidents.

These were also used under Rule 55 when a train was stopped on the running line and not protected by any other means. Failure to do this could (and sometimes did) cause a catastrophic accident, so reliance was placed on lever collars for far more than preventing a damaged pantograph and wire and some operational embarrassment.

I think the electric ones are assumed to be able to regenerate most of the time, and revert to friction braking in the rare event that the supply can't take the regenerated power. So fitting rheo braking to a modern electric train is arguably a waste of money.

I think the 800 doesn't have rheostatic braking because it was expected to be on electric (regenerative) most of the time, and it was up against a weight limit in the DfT spec. The GWR ones were all converted to bi-mode but didn't get the rheostatic braking. GWR's 802s were specified (by GWR itself) with rheostatic braking and larger fuel tanks, reflecting their use on West of England services with much longer runs on diesel. I assume TPE went for the same configuration. It's the rheostatic grids that cause problems for Voyagers at Dawlish, but I haven't heard of 802s having similar problems.

Anyone have a photo of the rheostatic grid on the 802s? Perhaps something an aftermarket supplier could produce to go with the Electra vinyls? I think I'm promising myself one of these as a reward for if I get the layout back into working condition.

However, if two five-cars are coupled, the pans at the extreme front and rear are raised. This is to minimise the effect on current collection at the rear caused by vibrations in the wire set up by the pantograph ahead. If they can't raise either of those, they can raise one in the middle but are subject to speed restriction. This is unlike Pendolinos, which have two pans but only one can be raised at a time because there is a 25kV connection through the unit between them. Hence one can power the whole train and raising two would cause a short circuit if they bridged a neutral section. Conversely, 700s also have two pans but run with both raised, which is fine at the lower top speed and works because they two halves of the train are electrically independent. Interestingly the Class 810 units now under construction for East Midlands Railway will have engines in four of the five cars but will still need pantographs each end. It will be interesting to see how they work that one out. The bodyshells are also a bit shorter to allow 10 cars to fit at St Pancras - another one for Kato to go at?

The OLE people seem particularly inconsistent with how they identify their structures, although they are almost always present and legible and must be unique within a wide area - the structure number closest to an incident is quoted when requesting an emergency isolation. Traditionally it was a mileage and a structure number within the mile, with a one- or two- letter prefix from a grand scheme someone in the electrification department probably thought up on a quiet Friday afternoon (link below). But they don't always use the same datum as the mileposts, and about 1972 they changed from miles to km (so there's a big jump in numbers at Weaver Junction even though the prefix stays the same). More recent schemes such as GWML use the ELR instead, but still not always the same datum as the mileposts. http://www.railwaycodes.org.uk/electrification/mast_prefix0.shtm

There are plenty of digital records on the railway that identify position in miles and chains or miles and yards. For engineering purposes all work will be done in metric, but it has to be translated into other units for operators and to interface with legacy systems. To expand a little on the above, the Engineers Line Reference was first invented by the GWR I believe but later applied across the network. Each route has a three-letter code which is often vaguely indicative of the start and end points or a traditional name of the route. At some stage this was expanded by adding a digit in cases where the chainage would otherwise be ambiguous, so that any location can be identified by the ELR and chainage, and I think also any structure by ELR and the number/letters on the affixed plate. The 35 yard discrepancy at Wolverton appears to have been judged too minor to warrant a change of ELR. The Quail map for Harecastle also shows CMD3 for the old tunnel line, presumably because there may be assets still in someone's database (I believe Highways England use ELR for the disused rail lines that were transferred to them).

The text you quoted from Ahrons isn't particularly clear about which era some of his comments relate to. Equally I can understand why they wouldn't want to move the official position of a station even if a re-building moved the centreline a short distance. Lenton South is quoted as 125 27 in my Quail, so had moved a couple of chains since Midland days. But the Quail pre-dates the latest re-signalling so it may have moved again since (don't have time to check the Sectional Appendix right now). This is probably a matter of layout changes moving the nominal position of the junction (which obviously spreads over many chains anyway) rather than a change to the zero point. The comment about the missing quarter-mile around Bedford could also be a rounding up of a shorter distance, in some publication that only quoted quarter-miles. Interesting your link shows Birmingham to Derby as Down in 1857 - it's Up today.

Today Nottingham is at 123 miles 39 chains according to the Quail map (nominally measured at the midpoint of a through station) and the 123½ mile-post is still there. But this is measured via Melton Mowbray, the shortest distance at the time, so a present day London-Nottingham train actually sees decreasing mileage over the last three quarters of a mile from Mansfield Junction. However it is still travelling in the Down direction. I can't see any evidence of a change of mileage around Bedford that might relate to that lost quarter-mile. I suspect during the remodelling in the 1980s someone decided to iron it out, which suggests there is a bit of track somewhere in Bedford that has a rather ambiguous chainage. It probably isn't as much as a quarter mile now and possibly never was.

I believe it matches the posted mileage, at least as it was at the time. For example the WCML table (M1) gives "Route and MP mileage" starting at Euston, then at Golborne a second mileage row starts to show the MP mileage. This then re-starts at zero at Preston and Lancaster as I noted in previous posts. I haven't checked every table by any means, but if there are discrepancies elsewhere it may be a sign that the line has been re-miled in the last half-century. Agreed it's annoying that it only includes primary routes, or at least those that were primary routes at the time. But it would be a much thicker book if it included the whole pre-Beeching network. I used to share an office with the BR train performance team, who had a full set of gradient profiles (probably including many closed lines too) comprising multiple shelves of leather-bound volumes.

I'm not aware of any such - I only have relatively modern Quail maps. These show the non-Metrolink part of the MSJ&A being miled from Oxford Road, and then changing south of Altrincham to be miled from Central. There was a discussions somewhere, possibly on here, a few years ago about a picture showing a MR milepost on the curve from Moorthorpe to South Kirkby sometime in the 70s, with the correct figure for if the Midland mileposts had continued from Swinton. Perhaps a re-miling from zero at Burton Salmon explains this.

I believe the mileages have been unchanged for many years - as I explained further back, it's usually more trouble than it's worth to change them even if they get rather untidy with route closures etc. Those I mentioned above and below are the same in the Ian Allan gradients book where they are included at all, which is a reprint from about 1963. The mileage from Euston continues past Piccadilly, through Oxford Road, and along both the Windsor Link and the Ordsall Chord. It finishes at Windsor Bridge South Junction and Irwell Street Junction where the former L&Y mileage from Victoria continues towards Bolton or Wigan. At Ordsall Lane it "crosses" the mileage on the Chat Moss route which runs from a zero at Lime Street. That mileage is unusual in that it is ascending in the Up direction and also because both it and the mileages from Euston are used for different parallel tracks between Lime Street and Edge Hill.

Yes, the mileage changes at the former junction from 33 miles 26 chains from Dundee Tay Bridge, to 203 miles 11 chains from Carlisle via Perth and Forfar. One of many cases where an apparently random change gives a clue to railway history. I noticed on a visit to Ireland that north of Bray there is a modern change of mileage sign that even gives the origin points, where the mileage from Pearse via Dun Laoghaire gives way to the mileage from Harcourt Street.

The mileage to Manchester and Liverpool is continuous from a zero at Euston (via Crewe), with Piccadilly being 188 miles 67 chains according to a Quail map (not latest edition, but these things rarely change). The same mileage continues to Golborne Junction where it changes to a zero a short distance away at at Newton-le-Willows junction, the original starting point for the northward branch off the Liverpool and Manchester. This series continues to Preston where it re-starts from zero and does the same at Lancaster, so this part of the WCML does indeed reflect its early history. It re-starts at zero at Carlisle, which is the zero point for most of the Caledonian.

One of the links above suggests early 60s but from childhood recollections I would say about 1980. They are certainly a lot more conspicuous painted yellow. The relevant text is also quote in a linked article, suggesting that posts are required every quarter of a mile but there's nothing there that prevents them being changed. Might cause a problem in future if they decide to replace them with metric measurements for ETCS (which works in metric so has speed restrictions in km/h) or any other reason.

That must be a fairly delicate balance considering the amount of single line and the distance between sidings in some cases. Does the 70-80% conceal that on most days trains meet their schedule and then there are "bad days" when the schedule totally collapses? Time of arrival is important to freight customers too. I can't help thinking that a European-style fixed schedule might serve all parties better than the sort of semi-fixed arrangement you describe. It is a tenant that has some rights, albeit perhaps not defined very well. The precise limits of those rights are probably the main question at issue here. I'd say the big picture for VIA is very similar to Amtrak, though the detail is different. Both are at the whim of government as to what (if any) routes and services they can operate, and both rely to a large degree on co-operation of the companies that control most of their track. But most of both networks (measured geographically if not in number of trains) are the sort of long-distance service that can never be competitive with air, and has to survive on tourism and/or funding as a social necessity. There are some medium-distance corridors where a more favourable government attitude (more funding, getting tougher with freight operators etc) could introduce some extra viable passenger services. There are a few where the size and separation of city pairs might justify high speed rail, which would be competitive at longer distances than conventional speeds. But there's never going to be the sort of nationwide passenger network that existed in the mid-20th century when commercial air travel and interstate highways were largely non-existent.